If an LG Electronics employee really did intend to damage a few Samsung Electronics washing machines at a shopping mall in Berlin, he probably should have been a bit more discreet about it.

Instead, what we have is the latest odd twist in a longtime crosstown rivalry between two of South Korea’s best-known electronics makers.

First, the details: on Thursday, clerks at an electronics store in Berlin called the police after a man allegedly broke the doors of four high-end Samsung washing machines, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News.

According to the account, the police questioned the unnamed man, identified by Yonhap as an LG executive, at his hotel. There was some confusion over whether he had denied breaking the machines, and the police only closed the case after LG agreed to buy the washing machines, Yonhap reported, citing unnamed “corporate sources” that don’t appear to work for LG.

Why Berlin? That’s where hundreds of executives from both Samsung and LG are gathered for the annual IFA trade show to show off their new refrigerators, smartphones, virtual reality headsets and, yes, high-end washing machines.

In a statement, LG confirmed the general facts of the case, acknowledging that a company researcher had indeed been questioned by police. But the company also strongly rejected the notion that the researcher was engaged in some kind of low-level industrial sabotage.

“If we were to surreptitiously damage a rival company’s products to disparage them in some way, there’s no reason for us to have sent researchers!!” LG said in a statement to the press, complete with that double exclamation mark. “If there had been any such foul intentions, we would have sought ways and people that would go unnoticed.”

In other words, go ahead and accuse us of breaking washing machines, but please don’t insult our intelligence.

And oh, by the way, while a local police officer was indeed dispatched to the scene of the incident, LG says no employees were ever physically hauled into a police station. So there’s that. (The company was silent on whether it bought the washing machines or not.)

The accusations and denials shine a light on the sometimes-cutthroat world of consumer electronics, where posing as a customer and scoping out rivals’ products is just a part of doing business.

“For any company, it’s very common for researchers to visit and check out rival companies’ products on display as well as their own, while on a business trip. That was the case for this trip as well,” the LG statement said. It’s just that, in this case, “a product from a certain [unnamed] company was unexpectedly damaged.”

In a one-line statement sent to the Journal, Samsung said: “It is regrettable that such an incident might have occurred ahead of such an important consumer electronics event.”

Samsung also told Yonhap News that it had footage of a similar incident also involving LG employees vandalizing Samsung products in Berlin. LG’s statement didn’t address this claim.

The rivalry between the two sides stretches back for decades. Samsung, the world’s largest maker of smartphones and televisions, is clearly in the ascendance now — Samsung Electronics’ total sales last year were about four times those of LG Electronics.

But LG has been making headway in recent months. Its latest flagship smartphone, the G3, has performed admirably this year, helping the company double its net profit in the most recent quarter from a year earlier.

The G3’s success has come at the expense of Samsung, which saw its net profit fall for the first time in nearly three years during the same quarter, as the company was weighed down by poor sales of its Galaxy S5 smartphone.

In the less-glamorous world of home appliances, Samsung has plenty of momentum these days, which may explain the recent flap in Berlin. In the most recent quarter, Samsung’s consumer electronics division saw operating profit jump 79% from a year earlier. Even so, the division accounts for just one-tenth of the overall company’s operating profits.

And in case you’re wondering, the appliance at the center of the storm is the slick-looking Samsung WW9000 front load washing machine with crystal blue door. It retails for about $2,700.